Saturday, September 04, 2010

Syracuse Kansas

Syacuse Kansas is a town that's about as far south and west in Kansas as you can go. It has a population of 1824 with 2594 in the entire county which is 998 square miles of land. Yeah, Syracuse is about it for miles and miles. The closest town with civilization (meaning a Lowes or Home Depot) was 52 miles away. What does one do with a weekend to while away in Syracuse Kansas. The one and only theatre had one screen with one showing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I believe it employed maybe three people, one for the ticket booth, one for the snack bar, and one for the projector. When entering the seating area, a sign was found that said, "Please let us know if we need to adjust the sound level." I wanted to bring that sign back to Omaha and post it in some of the theatres here as the sound level can be just a little high at times. When the time arrived for the movie to start, there were no trailers of movies to come, there were no advertisements for the snack bar, the lights just dimmed and the movie started.

This is the building we were working on. In about six weeks the construction went from a concrete slab to the building up, the inside walls built, the electrical wiring done, and the drywal mostly completed. All the inside work was completed with volunteers at only a cost of a few meals and a place to sleep for our crews and a place to park their motor homes for the framers and drywallers.

Here was home away from home. Not bad actually. I've had much worse places to sleep than this when on mission trips. It was airconditioned, a deceit bathroom and those with computers could pick up the free WiFi from the bowling alley across the street.

Here's how I spent the week. This is a picture of me in the attic of the church running in MC (Metal Clad wires). I'm actually laying on my side while doing the work. I sure got ribbed about being up in the attic laying down on the job.

This would be the sound booth switches which is where the other end of the wires that I was working on in the the attic go. This is just the power wires there still have to be the load wires, as it's called, which would go to different sets of lights, the baptistry, and anything else electrical in the sanctuary. The sound booth is the hub of everything in the sanctuary. So the next time to pass by a church sound booth this is was is behind the drywall surrounding the booth.

We had a great time even though the group was a small 7 people this time.